In this study, the interrelational structure of the six love styles based on J. A. Lee's theory (1973, 1974) was analyzed, and developmental changes in the structure at distinct behavioral stages of romantic love (Matsui, 1991) were examined. One thousand and ninety-two undergraduates from six universities in the Tokyo Metropolitan area responded to a questionnaire asking about (1) their behavior and experience in romantic love, (2) love and liking scales (Rubin, 1970), and (3) love style scale developed by Matsui, Tokusa, Tachizawa, Okubo, Omae, Okamura, and Yoneda (LETS-2; 1990) based on Lee's theory. Principal component analysis and multidimensional scaling of LETS-2 scores of 738 students who had an intimate heterosexual friend indicated that their Eros, Mania, and Agape scores clustered together. Analyses of variance showed that Eros, Mania, and Agape scores increased as love developed, but the Ludus score peaked at the kissing stage, and the Storge score was high at an early stage. All the analyses suggested that the interrelational structure of the six love styles is perhaps square or triangular pyramid, and not circular as Lee hypothesized

Terasawa (1991) explained word-frequency effect in recognition memory as interference caused by preexperimental encounters with a target item. As a result of additional encounters with high-frequency words, target episodes with these words are more difficult to distinguish from pre-experimental encounters than target episodes with low-frequency words. Following Terasawa's proposition, it was hypothesized that recognition performance is influenced by an encounter with the target occurring much earlier, as long as the episode remained outside conscious awareness. Two similar experiments, with intersession interval of four and six months respectively, were carried out to see the effects of the first session on recognition performance in the second session. Each session consists of study and test phases. In the first experiment, high false alarm rate was detected with the items presented in the first session. In the second experiment, in addition to the within-session recognition task, subjects were asked to recognize targets studied in the first session; a task at which they were remarkably successful. These results suggest that a much earlier event may substantially influence memory.

We examined the temporal invariance hypothesis in handwriting, using the dynamic programming (DP) matching algorithm. The DP matching algorithm was originally developed for the speech recognition to eliminate fluctuations of time axis caused by different speech rates. This algorithm can determine the optimal point-to-point correspondences (warping function) between the standard velocity pattern and different patterns. We found that this algorithm worked well for various velocity patterns, even when their total writing time was different from the standard pattern. Only 30 to 50 percents of handwriting movements showed temporal invariance. The writing movements which didn't show temporal invariance consisted of several sub-motor units. The borders between the units were not limited near the end of each letter. The results suggest that handwriting of a word does not show the temporal invariance and that it is executed by some discrete sub-motor units.

The effect of the number of characters on the reading rate of character strings moving from right to left on a CRT was investigated (Experiment 1). Characters were added one by one to the right end of the string, and the number of characters displayed simultaneously was gradually increased from 1 to 30. Subjects (21 undergraduates) were asked to adjust the moving rate of characters until the optimal moving rate for reading was obtained. It was found that the optimal moving rate increased proportionately as the number of characters displayed simultaneously increased from 1 to 5, but it was stabilized at about 190 milliseconds/character when the number of characters exceeded five. This result was interpreted as follows: characters are processed one after another when the number of characters is five or less, while chunked characters are analyzed for morphemes when the number of characters exceeds five. A model for sentence structure analysis that includes morpheme processing was constructed according to this interpretation. The validity of the model was tested (Experiment 2, subjects were 20 undergraduates.), which showed that when the number of characters was five or less, characters were analyzed one after another for the detection of morphemes.

Models for the test-retest situation are proposed, in which an interval between a test and a retest changes over subjects. In the model of a single observed variable we assume that the true score of the variable changes as a Markovian process. We show that stability and reliability of a test can not be estimated separately in the ordinary test-retest model which assumes equal stability for subjects, but that they can be estimated separately with our model. In the model of a latent variable (factor) we assume various stabilities for the latent variable and the non-zero covariances of specific factors in a test and a retest. These models are applied to actual data, and stabilities and reliabilities of tests are estimated quantitatively.

The purpose here is to investigate how the process of relating ‘meanings’ to scripts is influenced by the developmental changes of concepts about these activities, with an example of ‘dining’. Based on previous studies that the concept of ‘dining’ develops from physiological function orientation to social function orientation, second, fourth, and sixth graders, and college students were asked to plan ‘dining’ with a physiological goal or a social one. The results are as follows. (1) Generated plans became more connected with goals developmentally in both social and physiological context. (2) Second graders who attached much importance to physiological function of ‘dining’ were apt to generate plans with physiological meanings even in social goal context.

A cognitive task concerning intra-familial kinship terms was imposed on 125 junior high school students (male 57, felale 68). Forty-six questions were read successively and subjects were required to answer each item. These questions consisted of two types; one required the subjects to identify various familial relationship (e.g. “my uncle ”) from everyday description (e.g. “my parent's brother”), and the other presented relationship through legal degree of relationships (e.g. “my parent's parent's male child, other than my parent”), some questions of both types containing redundant information concerning gender. The main results were as follows. (1) Correct percentages on lineal relatives regardless of question type were very high. (2) High correlation between related gender-differentiated kinship terms was observed. (3) While questions employing ordinary expressions yielded higher correct percentages than those expressed in legal terms, redundant information reduced correct percentages when combined with ordinary expression.

The present study investigated the effect of the type of conversation on the recognition memory of statements appeared in the conversation. The experiment used two types of conversation; goal-oriented conversation and desultory conversation. The examined items were as follows: (1) the recognition memory of the surface form of statements which appeared in both types of conversation, (2) the effect of whether the sex of speaker was the same as the subject's or not, (3) the effect of whether the subject joined the conversation or just listened to conversation. Subjects (40 male and female undergraduates) were randomly assigned either to the listening condition in which they read the scenario of a conversation silently while listening to the tape recorded version of the same conversation, or to the utterance condition in which they played the part given in the scenario as if they were conversing with a partner whose utterance was given by the tape. The following results were obtained. Recognition memory of both surface form and content of statements was high in the goal-oriented, listening, same-sex condition, in the goal-oriented, utterance, other-sex condition, and in the desultory, listening, other-sex condition; it was low in desultory, utterance, other-sex condition. These results suggested that the recognition memory of conversation was dependent on various factors such as the type of conversation, the identity of the speaker (self or non-self), and the part played in the conversation (joining or listening).

One of the unsettled issues in visual search research is whether the search for a conjunction of motion and the other physical feature (e.g. color or shape) is serial or parallel. In the present experiment, the subjects (six undergraduate students) were instructed to search for a target defined by color, shape, motion, or combinations of the two out of these three features, and the reaction time was measured. The slopes of the regression (number of items in the display vs. reaction time) are the largest for a target defined by a conjunction of color and shape, the smallest for a target defined by one feature, and intermediate for a moving conjunctive target. These results are consistent with those of McLeod and colleagues (1988, 1991) which suggest that a specific visual subsystem operates as a movement filter.